Repairing damage to a structure requires detailed analysis of the damage. Depending on the specific structure part that is damaged, analysis can be a simple procedure or a very complex procedure. In reference to an aircraft, known systems and methods for analyzing and determining a necessary repair, referred to as dispositioning, require a complex set of steps that a maintainer has to perform, which require a great deal of labor and time.
For example, when an aircraft has been damaged the maintainer follows a set of written procedures from various Integrated Electronic Technical Manuals (IETMs) or paper manuals. The typical procedure set forth in the IETMs requires the maintainer to make one or more Mylar™ templates of a part and subdivide the form into grids of various predetermined sections or zones. Different templates show different aspects of the damage. For example one template will show allowable damage depth and another will show the allowable diameter of the damage. The maintainer then applies the form to the damaged part to determine the actual location of the damage within the grid. Based on the location of the damage the maintainer refers to an IETM that has multiple procedures for performing various tasks on the aircraft, and follows the procedures set out in the IETM, which may require collecting more data. During this process the maintainer may have to reference several IETMs and take several sets of data as directed by each reference to each IETM. Once the maintainer has recorded all the data, the maintainer utilizes the IETMs to determine the severity or class of the damage and whether the damage is repairable. The maintainer then calculates whether the damage is reparable and if the damage is repairable, the maintainer again utilizes the IETMs to determine the proper repair configuration, materials and processes needed to make the repairs. This process is labor intensive and costly.
It would be desirable to have an automated system for analyzing damage to a structure, such as an aircraft, train, bus, tank or ship. Such a system would present a maintainer with data fields in which requested data pertaining to the damage would be entered, apply the data to a predetermined set of rules stored in a database, and determine an appropriate repair procedure based on an interpretation of the data. As used herein, the word ‘structure’ is defined as a complete structure comprising various parts. For example, an aircraft is a structure comprising a fuselage, wings, a stabilator, etc. Thus, analysis of damage to a structure involves analysis of damage to specific parts of the structure.